ONE OF my best mates is a former colleague by the name of Tom Barnard, who I worked with from 1999 to 2005 on the news desk of a well-known new car motoring weekly. We had a lot of fun, while the car industry itself was going through something of a purple patch.
The economy was strong, launch budgets were huge and the cars were better than they ever were – and, we both seem to agree, better than they ever
